


this is your ship & you are the captain

by Ffwydriad



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, coda to c2e99, resurrection feels, spoilers for c2e98
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23189242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ffwydriad/pseuds/Ffwydriad
Summary: “Are you doing all right?” Caduceus asks him, the morning after, looking over the lichen covered scar that still lingers on his chest.“I’m fine,” Fjord says. “A little on edge, but otherwise - you know, I’m fine.”Caduceus doesn’t say anything, just nods, and Fjord wasn’t even trying to lie to him.
Relationships: Fjord & The Mighty Nein, Fjord & The Wildmother (Critical Role), Fjord & Yasha (Critical Role)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	this is your ship & you are the captain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chargetransfer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chargetransfer/gifts).



> piece i wrote on fjord & not being dead for FTH 2020. 
> 
> title is from stefan argus' ship in a bottle...which i made a fjord amv for b/c im a nerd. and also bad at titles. these two facts may be related.

“Are you doing all right?” Caduceus asks him, the morning after, looking over the lichen covered scar that still lingers on his chest. 

“I’m fine,” Fjord says. “A little on edge, but otherwise - you know, I’m fine.”

Caduceus doesn’t say anything, just nods, and Fjord wasn’t even trying to lie to him. 

* * *

He’s walking down the streets of Nicodranas, alone. He doesn’t know the city all too well, but he’s good at navigating on his own, good at figuring out where he needs to go with just a couple of quick words with someone local. Nicodranas isn’t near as large as Port Damali, and he was always able to navigate that city without ever getting more lost than he could solve with a warm smile. 

Except, he is lost now, standing on the streets of the city at dusk. The signs around him are all in a language he can’t read, nothing at all familiar, and no people making eye contact, who look open to talk - or, maybe, no people at all?

The buildings seem to loom around him, tall and dark and dripping in their finery, and he forces his jaw to relax as he can already feel himself grinding his teeth in anxiety. He grips his arm, solidly, and focuses himself. 

He’s not lost. How can he be lost, when there’s a lighthouse to guide him home?

From wherever he is, so far from the docks and the shore, he can still see that light, bright and circling. Melora stands, in the distance, her arms outstretched to the sea, the stone of her dress catching in the calmly rotating light, and he lets her guide him home.

He stands at her feet, and looks out over the ocean. 

The waves crash against the rocks beneath him, not violent, but ever present in their strength. The wind is stronger, here, swirling around him and blowing the hair out of his face. He wants to tie it back, but it’s not quite long enough, yet, so maybe it’d be better to just cut it short. 

There’s a sword in his hand. He didn’t summon it, but it sits there regardless. The falchion stares back up at him with that single, golden eye; placid, unmoving, but still gazing fiercely upwards. 

At his feet, the water is lapping gently as the waves press into the warm sand. He’s at the beach where he woke up, after the shipwreck, the beach where he first held this sword. It’s night, now, dark, and all he can see is the sand and the water fading out of view in all directions, until it’s too dark to see anything at all.

The falchion feels too light, in his hand. When he had first picked it up, from where it lay beside him on the beach, it felt like the heaviest thing in the world. A responsibility that was more than he had ever had before. The first time he’d ever been chosen for anything important. 

And then it was a chain, pulling him down to the bottom of the sea, a curse he couldn’t free himself of that was so heavy he knew he’d drown. 

Now, though, it’s light. The eye, for all it glares up at him with judgement and rage, is just glass, unmoving, and as he tosses it into the sea, it skips like the stones he used to toss as a child, watching them dance across the ocean before sinking below the waves. 

He sits down, in the sand, and looks up at the sky. It’s dark, and he thinks it must be a cloudy night, until he watches the moon flicker. He breathes out, and the bubbles rise, and he’s been underwater. Has been, he thinks, this whole time. 

That’s when he starts drowning, the breath in his lungs being replaced with salty water that chokes him. He tries not to panic, to not breathe in, but he’s drowning. 

He always knew he would die at sea, that it was only a matter of time, and it was terrifying, and it was fitting, and it was welcoming.

When he wakes up, he expects to be choking on saltwater. But he’s not, and for all he startles awake, it’s nothing but panic in his chest. There’s no sword in his chest, no curse on his breath.

The border of the bubble shimmers, where it cuts through the room, unbroken. The guardian Caduceus has set watching over him still stands at attention, unmoving, it’s stoic face of crystals staring out against the deck wall. He sits on the bed at watches it, for a few moments. 

Not that he doesn’t appreciate the intent, but it isn’t the most comforting sight to wake up to. 

He sits there, for a few moments, tries to lull himself back into sleep. The panic faded just as sharply as it came, but between it, and the glow from both the bubble and the guardian, and the rocking of the boat made even worse this deep into the deck of the ship, he knows even after a few moments that it isn’t going to work. 

The door creaks as he opens it, and he steps out into the thin hall. He can hear, even through the walls, the sound various snores he’s grown used to from his companions. Mostly Nott, from where she sleeps in the hammock stretched across the hallway. It’s an impressive amount of sound, given how small she is.

The snoring hasn’t changed at all, changing back to Veth. But then, aside from appearance, it doesn’t seem like all that much really has changed. Still as aggravating as always. 

For the longest time, he had thought she hated him. Even the thought of that sends him images of her face, watching him with worry concern, the others all around him with similar faces, as he woke up on the deck of the ship.

Except, he didn’t wake up, exactly. He came back, from the dead.

He heads up the stairs.

The sea is quiet, tonight, no crashing waves or violent storms. The deck is calm, no real work needed to keep them on course, so he’s not in the way, sitting at the prow, and he’s not questioned, because he’s the captain. 

Between the lanterns on deck and the moon, the night’s just about as clear as day, until you look into the water, pitch save for where the light reflects.

It still feels like there’s water in his lungs.

Maybe it will always feel that way. 

This isn’t really helping. He should take over, let Orly have a break - given how much work the man does during the day on top of taking charge through the whole night, he deserves it, especially given that he went through just the same shit. Maybe working off some energy will be the push needed for him to get a good night’s rest again.

Someone leans up on the rails beside him. He doesn’t turn, to look, keeps watching the moon reflected over the water in a near perfect half. It’s probably Caduceus, there to press him on the  _ fine _ , even though Fjord is fine, give or take a bit of trouble sleeping, or Jester, in one of the rare moments when he’s able to catch her quiet.

“Can’t sleep, huh?” he asks. 

“Mmm,” comes the supportive hum, and he looks up to see Yasha staring off into the sea as well. 

Yasha wasn’t standing over him with worried eyes when he came breathing back to life like he'd been shaken awake while falling asleep on watch. Yasha stands, to the side, her hands coated in blood and viscera, the monster that killed him in her hands, her face cold and distant. 

“Thanks for keeping an eye on Nott,” he tells her. “Veth,” he corrects.

“She is very...herself,” she says.

“Yeah,” he nods. “I’m gonna-”

He pulls away, to go somewhere, anywhere else - taking over for Orly is a good idea - but she reaches out an arm to stop him, not touching him, just sitting there in the air. 

“Did you-” she starts. “What was it like?”

His instinct is to ask her what she’s talking about, but he knows. How can he not. He stands there, one hand still gripping the rails, trying to figure out what to say, so many lies hanging on the edge of his lips, but none of them that he feels like saying, not more than the truth. 

“It wasn’t like anything,” he tells her. “To be honest, it just felt like normal healing, albeit with an incredible headache. Caduceus asked me, if I experienced any visions from the Wildmother, but if I saw or heard anything, I don’t remember.”

Yasha nods. “If you -” she pauses, frowns, tries again. “Would you have come back?” she asks him. 

“Would you?”

“I don’t think I get a choice,” she says. “From what he told me. But. Um. I don’t want to leave you guys. Ever again. Not if I can.”

“I don’t know if I would,” he tells her, and it tumbles from his lips before he can even consider whether he wanted to say it out loud. 

Yasha looks at him, and in the gray scale of the darkness, her eyes look the same color, a light gray that isn’t nearly as cold as he almost wishes it was. He waits for her to look upset, or judgemental, but instead she gives a sympathetic half-smile. 

“I don’t really remember, or know if it was real, but it felt-” he pauses and tries to find the words. “Warm. Safe. Not as terrifying as I thought it would be. And, I mean, it isn’t like the group needs me.”

“Yeah, we don’t,” Yasha says. 

“Wow, thank you Yasha, that was exactly what I needed to here,” he says, and she hides a small smile from behind her hand. 

“They don’t need me either,” she says. “The fight in the cathedral proved that, and you- you didn’t have to save me. You could have just-”

And, for all that he remembers arguing for that what feels like years ago, he says, “we weren’t going to just leave you behind. You’re-”

“One of us,” she says. “I mean, I don’t really know about everyone else, but I don’t think we need you in a fight. Or to be Captain. Or because you’re good at lying to people. We need you because you’re a member of the Mighty Nein. Because you’re Fjord.”

“Thank you, Yasha, that means a lot to me,” Fjord says. “I suppose this is where I tell you my name’s not Fjord. Sorry, that’s a joke, because-”

“No, yes, I got that reference,” Yasha says. “It was very funny.”

“You didn’t laugh,” he points out.

“I am not very good at laughing.” She cracks a smile, wide, and uneasy, but still bright. “Ha. Ha.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right, you aren’t good at laughing. I wasn’t aware that was something that someone could be bad at,” Fjord says. “For the record, I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. Or dying. Again.”

“Good,” Yasha says. “I don’t want any of you to leave.”

“I thought loneliness was kind of your whole thing,” Fjord points out. “With the wandering in and out and the-”

“I already started caring about you,” she says. “And I - I don’t really want to be alone. Again.”

“I don’t either,” he says. 

They stand like that, silent, staring out against the slowly lapping waves. The sun hasn’t shown up, yet, but the distant horizon is starting to get a faint lighter glow. It’s already getting that late, or that early, probably the better phrase. 

“I think I’m gonna try and get back to sleep,” he says, stepping aside. “You should too,” he adds, when Yasha doesn’t make the moves to do the same. 

She laughs, at that, a little chuckle, and it isn’t bad at all. “I’ll be okay,” she says. “I don’t need to sleep so much.”

“Alright,” he says, and doesn’t press her into that at all, because for all he thinks that maybe someone should, after watching that fight she’d had, but he knows how much he doesn’t, wouldn’t want to hear it if he were in her spot, so he doesn’t. 

He’s not really in a position to judge, well, any of them. Everyone’s got their own ways of getting better, of coping.

“Night,” he says. “Morning. Or whatever.” She gives him a little wave, and he heads back below decks. 

He ducks back under where Veth is sleeping, her snoring died down but it doesn’t quite look like she’s about to wake up yet. He opens back the door to the room he’s been given as slowly as possible, to stop the creak from disturbing any of them, and closes it just as carefully. 

The crystal guardian still stands over the bed, unchanged, and it’s just as comforting and just as creepy as it’s always been. The dome shimmers, where it cuts across the room, and he lays down on the bed, closes his eyes, turns away and pulls the blanket over his head to give himself some cover against the dark.

In the morning, they’ll have work to do, and a giant peace treaty between warring nations to watch over and sort out, but for now, it’s just the dark, and the rocking of the boat, and the sound of water lapping against the sides, and around him, out of sight but still beside him, his friends. His family. 

* * *

“How was your night, Fjord?” Caduceus asks him, over breakfast. He’s got that look around him, again, that too perceptive stare through your soul look that made Fjord swear it was magic. 

“It was good,” he says.

“I’m glad,” Caduceus tells him, and turns away to show Jester what he’s finished baking, and that must mean, Fjord thinks, that he was telling the truth.


End file.
